Teachers Topic : Life skills Literacy In ESL Teaching

I.Preliminary

You start to learn language from the day you are born. You learn to use language to express your feelings and communicate with others. During early speech and language development, you learn skills that are important to the development of literacy.

II.Defenition Of Literacy

Literacy has traditionally been described as the ability to read and write. It is a concept claimed and defined by a range of different theoretical fields.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) defines literacy as the "ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, compute and use printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. Literacy involves a continuum of learning in enabling individuals to achieve their goals, to develop their knowledge and potential, and to participate fully in their community and wider society."

Based on the origin of the word, derived from the word  literacy meaning (Echols and Shadily, 1995: 361). In the Oxford Advanced Learner's dictionary (1989: 728), literacy is mentioned as the ability to read and write. Simply put, Manullang (2009) defines literacy as the ability to read and write (literacy) or the ability to use language to read, write, speak and hear. In government programs, literacy is often translated straight into Calistung program, Read-Write-Count. At least that's the beginning of programs related to literacy, because that is the target is the literacy rate of the Indonesian people. Minimum standards of literacy in Indonesia are able to read, be it Latin letters, and / or Arabic characters.

Sue Watson Said that Life skills in literacy refer to the skills that people require in order to function in everyday and personal life situations. They do not necessarily have to relate to a job but they do need to allow individuals to function with the basic literacy skills that will be needed.

III.Function Of  Literacy

Literacy is a person's ability to read and write. Reading and writing are important to help function in school, on the job, and in societyLiteracy much more than the separate abalities to read and write;rather it is a complex concept of familirity with languange ,but by extention also spoken communication

In school, children with communication disorders are more likely to struggle with literacy skills. They often perform poorly in school, have problems reading, and have difficulty understanding and expressing language.Adults may also have literacy problems. Some adults continue to struggle with reading and writing from childhood. Others have trouble reading and writing after a stroke or brain injury.Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) assess and treat children and adults with communication disorders. SLPs work with teachers and other professionals to help people become effective communicators, problem-solvers, and decision-makers.

However, the question is whether the 'literacy' means simply just can read write and count (calistung)? Comprehensively 'literacy' actually covers identify, understand, translate, create, communicate and process the contents of print materials and writings. Thus evolved the term literacy, literacy was widely interpreted as a person's ability to use written or printed information to develop knowledge, bringing benefits to the community. Kirsch and Jungeblut in Literacy: Profiles of America's Young Adults as quoted Manullang (2009) says that a new can be said literat if he was able to understand something because of reading and doing something based on his reading comprehension.

Literacy can take place in any field, we know of science literacy, mathematics literacy, literacy and information technology, even media literacy. The language literacy is defined as the ability to read and write someone on the minimum level that is used as a means of communication, or language skills a person who at a certain level its ideas can be communicated and understood in a society that is literate, so the person can play a role in the community. Kern (2000) provides definitions of literacy in the academic context of second language education or foreign language as follows, which can be drawn a macro principle is that literacy involves communication:

Literacy is the use of  socially, historically, and culturally situated practices of creating and interpreting meaning through texts. It entails at least a tacit awareness of the relationship between textual conventions and their context of use and ideally, the ability to reflect critically and those relationships. Because it is purpose-sensitive, literacy is dynamic –not static, and variable across within discourse communities and cultures. It draws in a wide range of cognitive abilities, and knowledge of written and spoken language, and knowledge of genres, and on cultural knowledge.

Therefore not surprising that today's emerging trends in developed countries is to achieve education through skills development discourse (literacy education). Literacy goal is for each citizen is able to communicate (both oral and written) to meet their needs. Thus, English language teaching is also directed to develop language skills that make students life-long independent, creative, and able to solve problems by using the English language skills.

This is actually relevant to the curriculum that we use which clearly established that learning English is intended as an effort of learning the language as a means of communication, namely how students can use language in social interaction, namely as a language of communication. Therefore, the teaching of English language competency is focused on the discourse or text (discourse competence) with the assumption that people create discourse in communicating, both orally and in writing. In other words, the task of language teachers is to develop students' ability to communicate or to exchange the meaning of (Ministry of Education, Philosophical and Theoretical Basis Language Education, 2004). Hence the final agreement could be reached that the teaching of English should be emphasized on the importance of using language in a natural, authentic in order to develop life skills, that is able to serve the needs of students as members of society.

Thus, creating a literate generation as the ultimate goal of teaching in schools has become so urgent, given the fact that the low level of literacy which is closely related to the high school drop-out rates, poverty, and unemployment, the third is an indicator of low human development index (Wagner : 2000 in Manulang: 2009). Literacy is owned by a society seem very decisive mode of community life. Developed countries tend to have a higher standard of literacy than the third world countries. Thus no exaggeration to say for our country achieve a more meaningful level of progress, the government should be extra work to improve literacy standards.

IV.HISTORY OF LITERACY

The history of education has a long past. The first seats of learning were in India, Mesopotamia, Iran, and Egypt and, at later date in Greece. The Nalanda University (India) is one of the oldest universities in the world, where Chinese monk, Xuanzang (aka Hiuen Tsang), came to learn Buddhist Philosophy and Mathematics in 625 AD. Although the history of literacy goes back several thousand years to the invention of writing, what constitutes literacy has changed throughout history. At one time, a literate person was one who could sign his or her name. At other times, literacy was measured only by the ability to read and write Latin regardless of a person's ability to read or write his or her vernacular. 

Even earlier, literacy was a trade secret of professional scribes, and many historic monarchies maintained cadres of this profession, sometimes—as was the case for Imperial Aramaic -- even importing them from lands where a completely alien language was spoken and written. Some of the pre-modern societies with generally high literacy rates included Ancient Greece and the Islamic Caliphate. In the latter case, the widespread adoption of paper and the emergence of the Maktab and Madrasah educational institutions played a fundamental role

V.Implementation Based Learning English Literacy

In implementing the literacy-based English language learning, there are some things that should be underlined. According to Wells (1987) as quoted Alwasilah (2005) there are four levels of literacy according to their respective levels of education are:

• performative level; just able to read and write
• Functional Level; ability to use language for life (skills for survival), such as reading the manual or fill out credit card application. Junior high school English is designed to equip students achieve functional literacy rate this.
• Informational Level; the ability to access knowledge in English. Literacy of high school graduates is expected to reach this level.
• Epistemic level, the ability to transform knowledge in English.

Besides the emphasis on each of these levels, which needs to be underlined also the principle of literacy is a cycle of oral to written. This means that oral communication skills are prerequisites for building written communication skills. Literacy is a series of verbal (class 1 SMP) to writing (grade 3 SMA). But despite the junior high English in oral communication-oriented, students are also introduced to written communications in stages, especially the spoken variety of written language.

Sue Watson  in her site tell the checklist identifies the basic literacy skills that should be taught:

• Personal information including name, address, telephone numbers, age, parents.
• Community signs like, no bikes, out of order, ladies, men, and the symbols often used in public places
• Key words on items - danger, warning, poison etc.
• Key signs, stop, pedestrians only, exit etc.
• Some abbreviations like Dr., Mr and Mrs.
• Filling in forms with the individuals' key information.
• Looking up information like phone numbers and addresses.
• Directionality meanings, up, down, right, left.
• Prescription labels.
• Recipes.
• Basic maps, calendars and directories.
• Common signs in grocery stores.
• Basic laws.
• Basic banking information, how to deposit and withdraw funds and how to write cheques.
• Time - both digital and analogue.

It takes a great deal of time and patience to teach life skills. An overall procedure will look something like:

1. Model the specific concept, what it is and how it's done.
2. Provide an opportunity for the student to try.
3. If the student struggles, provide assistance and reinforce.
4. Provide cues for the student to do the task and continue to reinforce.
5. Repeat the tasks daily until the student is successful, providing cues until the student can do it independently.

To ensure that diversity is not easily forgotten spoken, each teaching unit of discourse or text is organized into four stages and two cycles, so that later learning method is known as the Four Steps Two Cycles model, as quoted from the module Ministry of Education: Philosophical and Theoretical Basis Language Education (2004), also Alwasilah (2005) and Listyani (2007). Model Four Steps Two Cycles is an English language learning model that was developed in order to create learning experiences that depart from oral cycle to write cycle, which in each cycle has four phases. The four stages include: 

1. Building Knowledge of the Text in which the teacher introduces the topic to be studied, cultural context, vocabulary, grammar
2. Modelling of Text is the stage of the introduction of oral or written text to the students, this is the stage displays (exposure) of the text conversation, which he was trained skills is reading, especially short texts such as the food menu in a restaurant, how to turn on the gas stove, how to cook fried rice , and so forth
3. Joint Construction of Text create collaboration antarsiswayang produce a text as a result of cooperation. For example, if in the previous stage the students talk about fried rice, then they learn to make yellow rice recipe, and in the last stage
4. Independent Construction of Text, students are expected to conduct a conversation or a monologue and be able to write text in accordance with the genre being studied, such as how to make fried noodles as his favorite food.

Although largely teaching-learning process is described in four stages, in practice the process is traversed twice. That is, the first cycle focused on oral language and the second cycle focuses on written language.

In general, between Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) and the so-called KBL has the same spirit. Both are intended to build oral and written communication skills. Only, KBL hinted to far more detailed and focused in the description of competencies. Briefly Alwasilah (2005) emphasize how different from the KBK KBL as follows. First, junior high school curriculum explicitly oriented to the development of oral communication competence, while the high school curriculum on the development of written communication competence.

Second, competence berwacana (discourse competence) into central competence while others regarded as supporting competence. Berwacana means producing text that are specific to particular contexts. Therefore, competence dibahasakan very specific by mentioning the act of language (speech act) like how to start a conversation, apologizing, asking for permission, and end the conversation.

Third, the CBC made the theme as a starting point so the pattern is let's talk about something. Instead, make follow-KBL language as point of departure so that the pattern is let's do something with language. With this pattern, the purpose of learning was more active and aggressive.

Fourth, KBL does not include the themes to be displayed in the classroom. What matters is the achievement of competence set forth in the act of language, whereas ajarnya materials can be searched alone. Techniques and methods were also submitted to the teacher. KBL, thus, do not disassemble the pair of the curriculum, but rather enrich our understanding of language competence and help us formulate learning goals and choosing a more specific type of text.

V.Conclusions

Equip students with English language competency in order to participate in modern society is a necessity if charges should not be called. Therefore learning English at school / madrasah should really apply the literacy-based teaching approach, which emphasizes the use of language reasonably and authentically to develop life skills. Such an approach is ideally encourage students' skills in using written or printed information to develop knowledge, bringing benefits to the community.

If the literacy level of our society has increased literat here-which means that someone understands something because reading and doing something based on his reading comprehension, then there will be a lot of positive impact on the life of the nation globally. High school graduates will have more competitiveness, their ability to continue their education as high as more open, their capacity to become part of the solution-and not become part of the problem-will also increase, to be expected there will be a lot more generations are powerless and literat contribute more in the community. 

This is the real education Should Be: generate 'human', and not print the human-shaped machines that can only be explained without being able to create, can only understand the symptoms without being able to solve problems, and perhaps can only achieve a TOEFL score of 500 without being able to communicate with the foreign language.

SOURCES

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy accesed on 23 april 2011

 http://specialed.about.com/od/teacherchecklists/a/lifeskillslit.htm accesed on 23 april 2011

http://agustinadjihadi.blogspot.com/2010/07/menjawab-kritik-gagalnya-pengajaran.html accesed on 23 april 2011

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